The general manager of the Cardinals in those years was Bob Howsam, who moved to Cincinnati in 1967. For 1968, he brought Anderson into the Reds' organization at Asheville, North Carolina, where he won the pennant. But in 1969, when Buzzie Bavasi left the Dodgers to take over the expansion San Diego team, Sparky took the opportunity to come to the majors as a coach for Preston Gomez, another dyed-in-the-wool Dodger system operative and the first Padre manager.

Howsam didn't forget him, however. The Reds were being rebuilt and collecting great talent, but the manager, Dave Bristol, was someone Howsam had inherited from the previous regime. We know how uncomfortable that makes a general manager. Bristol's teams were winning most of their games, but not really keeping pace in the pennant races being dominated by the Dodgers, Giants, and Cardinals. And Bristol couldn't match the teaching credentials Anderson had acquired in Howsam's eyes.

He made Anderson Cincinnati's manager for 1970.

It was another "Who's he?" situation, as with Weaver two years before. The baseball community knew Sparky; the public didn't. But this was becoming a real trend: Promote the men who did a good job for you within the system -- Alston, Houk, Williams, Weaver. Anderson hadn't been long in the Cincinnati system, but he'd been in the systems Howsam knew and admired.

It worked. Sparky's first try out of the starting gate was a 102-victory regular season, and a 3-0 sweep of Pittsburgh in the playoffs. But the Orioles, still smarting from the previous year's World Series loss to the Mets, beat them in 5 games.

Let's do what we did with Weaver. Here's Anderson's record:

1971: 79-83 for fourth place.
1972: 95 victories, 3-0 in playoffs with Pittsburgh, lost World Series to Oakland 3-4.
1973: 99 victories, lost playoffs to Mets 1-3.
1974: 98 victories, second to Dodgers.
1975: 108 victories, 3-0 in playoffs with Pittsburgh, 4-3 in World Series with Red Sox.
1976: 101 victories, 3-0 in playoffs with Philadelphia, 4-0 in World Series with Yankees.
1977: 88 victories, second to Dodgers.
1978: 92 victories, second to Dodgers.

That's a nine-year average of 96 victories and 26-16 in postseason.

So the Reds fired him.

Why?

The answer goes to the heart of the modern management question. Sparky, like Weaver, was dedicated to the staff system and dependence on his coaches. It is one of the many football organization concepts that has percolated into baseball and other sports. The modern game is too complex to be a one-man show at the directorship level. Too much information is available in a computer age, too many possibilities can be explored, too much interpersonal psychology is involved, and -- above all -- the competition is too stiff in an age when all rival clubs have access to the same resources, talent, and methods that only a few leaders used to have. So the manager -- who is, nowadays, really the head coach -- wants trusted, proficient assistants to whom he can delegate important tasks, from whom he can get valuable input and feedback, and with whom he can feel comfortable in an increasingly pressurized climate of modern media coverage.

The team Anderson put together in Cincinnati included Larry Shepard, Alex Grammas, George Scherger, and Ted Kluszewski. Shepard was the pitching coach, trained in the Dodger system back in the 1940s, with eighteen years of minor league managing experience before managing the Pirates in 1968 and 1969. Grammas, a Cardinal-product infielder who coached at third, had been at Pittsburgh when Shepard got there. Scherger had been Anderson's first manager at Santa Barbara, and had moved into the Cincinnati system later. Kluszewski had been a legendary home run hitter for the Reds in the 1950s, had gone into the restaurant business after completing his playing career in 1961, and had returned to the Reds as a minor league hitting instructor in 1969.

This group, with one change, was with Sparky all through the Cincinnati years, When Grammas left to manage the Milwaukee Brewers in 1976, he was replaced by Russ Nixon, who had spent twelve years catching in the American League and then managed for five years in the Cincinnati system.

And Joe Morgan, Pete Rose, and Tony Perez were like coaches on the field.

At the end of the 1978 season, the front office wanted to make changes in the coaching staff.

Sparky was flat-out against it.

Howsam was stepping out, possibly to take charge of a team in Denver, where a group expected to buy the A's from Finley. Dick Wagner, his assistant, was moving up to club president. The conglomerate ownership was taking a more active role, flushed with the success and attention brought to it by the Bid Red Machine. Just why it was decided to tamper with Anderson's staff isn't clear, but it obviously had something to do with front office politics.

Sparky kept saying no.

So they fired him along with the coaches.

It was a shock to all of baseball, but especially to Sparky. He knew he could get another job, with his credentials; in fact, six different clubs made him offers. But it made no sense. Nobody had been dissatisfied with him, and the only issue was loyalty (and his sense of what it took to keep winning). Still, he stuck by his father's teaching: In all the in-depth questioning that followed, he wouldn't blame anyone, wouldn't point fingers, wouldn't badmouth anything, wouldn't name the coaches involved. It was important to display class and, as he told his youngest son, to turn defeat into victory. And he did, by refusing to display any bitterness.

» NEXT